At the moment, this is a little bit experimental - we need to be sure it's working first before making anything rely on it! So right now, it's not going to make a lot of difference, although we'd appreciate it if you could sign in anyway and effectively be our guinea pigs for the system 😀
In the long run, though, there are a few things which will need you to be signed in.
First, for anyone submitting information to the site - event listings, shop details, club details,etc - signing in will allow you to "own" that listing and be able to update it and make changes without needing to either send us an email or re-submit it all from scratch every time. At the moment, a fair amount of admin time is taken up dealing with emails from event organisers asking for changes to their event listing, and without some kind of self-service option this will become increasingly onerous with the addition of new features such as the club directory. Giving you the ability to sign in will make this a lot easier for all of us.
Secondly, for visitors to the site, there are a number of things that logging in will enable. For example, you'll be able to set your home location so that the events listing and shop guide will default to that rather than needing multiple clicks to get to that information. And there's some data that will only be visible to logged in users. We don't currently show email and telephone contact details for events and shops, because doing so would make the site a magnet for scammers and spammers. But a lot of people would like to see that information, and a lot of event organisers and shop owners would like to be able to give it to you. The solution is to only show that information to logged in visitors, so it's not available to all the nasty bots but any human can see it.
In the more long term, we may look at adding other features such as an email newsletter or email notifications of new event listings near you. Don't worry - we'll never send you email without you explicitly opting in to receive it, so logging in isn't going to generate loads of spam! But for those who like to get this kind of thing in their inbox, having a site login will enable that.
The short answer is that Google is the most widely available third-party sign-in system.
Running our own, in-house sign-in system would mean storing usernames and passwords, as well as needing a multitude of features allowing you to sign up in the first place, then change your password, recover your password when you forget it, delete your account, etc. All of which is a whole world of pain, a potential hacking risk and a route we have no intention of going down. So using a third-party system is by far the most robust and practical option.
As for why Google, there are two main reasons. Firstly, Google's sign-in system is really easy to install and use on a website. Which is, trust me, a very important consideration!
And, secondly, more people have a Google account than any other third party system. If you've got a Gmail address, you've got a Google account. If you've got an Android phone, you've got a Google account. If you've got a YouTube account, you've got a Google account. And it's easy to sign up for a Google account if you don't already have one. Or even sign up for another one if you do already have one.
If you run a commercial organisation, such as a shop, you can create a business Google account that can be managed by multiple people at your organisation - which is handy if you need a shared sign-in account so that more than one of you can edit your listings and information here, as well as giving you all the benefits of Gmail with an email address in your own domain.
A Google sign-in also doesn't track you across multiple websites. It doesn't use third-party cookies, and doesn't allow any other website to detect that you're signed in here. So it won't trigger any of your privacy settings on your browser, either.